“Yes.”
“And do you have a red Chinese trunk?”
Mrs. Bonsor sighed, her eyes unfocused. “We did.”
“What happened to it?” Anna quietly held her breath.
“I don’t know.”
Joe met Anna’s excited eyes. He stood. “Ma’am, we need to speak with Mr. Bonsor.”
Anna and Joe mounted the creaking steps. Anna put her mouth to Joe’s ear and whispered, “I do believe he’s sickened because of his guilt.”
Joe whispered back, his soft breath tickling her ear, “You think he’s the killer?”
“No, because it wouldn’t explain the dummy. But he is definitely our man on the stairs.”
Mrs. Bonsor led Anna and Joe into a small bedroom, where Mr. Bonsor sat propped up by pillows in a double brass bed. He wore a faded dressing gown, which Anna could see above the covers, and a hot water bottle lay atop his feet. Even in the few days since Anna had last seen him, he had grown thinner. He seemed very small.
Joe asked Mrs. Bonsor to wait downstairs. She hesitated briefly, but complied.
“Good day, Mr. Bonsor,” Anna said coldly.
He leaned forward and coughed a wet, wheezing cough. “I haven’t had a good day in weeks.”
Anna said, “Yes, because you are eaten by guilt.”
Joe nudged Anna hard.
Mr. Bonsor’s chapped, dry lip curled up. “I beg your pardon.”
“You knew about your daughter’s death before we ever came to tell you. In fact, it was you who stuffed her body in the trunk.”
He looked as if he would deny it.
Anna raised her voice accusingly. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
Mr. Bonsor sighed. “How would you like it if your daughter was found dead in the apartment of her yellow lover? Would you want people to know ?”
“I can’t answer that, Mr. Bonsor. My daughter doesn’t have a Chinese lover.”
Joe stepped in. “Mr. Bonsor, what did you do?”
“I sent Elizabeth to her aunt’s. That’s it. A week later, I got a telegram that Elizabeth had never arrived.” He twitched with agitation.
Anna shifted impatiently. “Go on.”
“I suspected that Elizabeth had run off. Of course, my first stop was Leo Lim’s apartment. The door was unlocked. I found her. She was lying in his bed.” His eyes rolled tortuously. “She had started to smell.”
“Next to a dummy?”
“Yes.”
“Why was there a dummy in the bed?”
“I don’t know why!”
Joe said, “Go on Mr. Bonsor.”
“I didn’t want her body to be found in the apartment of a Chinaman. So I decided to move it. I could tell the police I found her dead in Griffith Park.”
His confession rubbed Anna raw inside. Mr. Bonsor cared more about his daughter’s reputation than her very life. It was an all-too-familiar story for Anna. She wondered if her own father would stuff her dead body in a trunk to save the family name. She feared he would.
Joe asked, “And then what happened, Mr. Bonsor?”
“I came back with a trunk and managed to get Elizabeth into it.”
“But you couldn’t get it down the stairs.”
His face sagged. “No. I dragged the trunk back into that Celestial’s apartment and locked the door. I sat there for a while trying to make a plan. Then, there was a knock on the door.”
“And you fled out the fire escape.”
He made a prolonged hacking sound, then continued in a congested voice. “I assumed I’d missed my chance—that whoever knocked would find the body. But if I didn’t report her missing, she couldn’t be identified.”
“Did your wife know?”
“Of course not. She thought Elizabeth had eloped to New York or somewhere a white girl can marry a Chinaman.”
Anna took Joe’s arm and steered him into the hallway. She whispered, “Do you believe him?”
“His story is too weird not to believe him.”
“Everything fits. The scratch marks on the floor. The body stuffed in the trunk. The timing. This explains the man on the fire escape, but it doesn’t explain the dummy in the bed, and we still don’t know definitively who the murderer was. If we assume he did it and stop investigating, we run the risk of letting the true killer go free and casting undeserved shame on an innocent man.” Plus Anna would no longer have a case.
“You need to go home and rest.”
Anna couldn’t rest, because the clock was ticking. She didn’t want to confess to Joe her grave mistake. Not if there was a tiny chance she could fix it. She had done exactly what he’d told her not to do, and in the worst possible way. She had alerted the press, and not just any member of the press but the most unscrupulous, sensationalizing reporter in LA. Joe would be livid.
“You’re going to be working on the case? Tirelessly? You won’t rest until we have someone in custody?”
“If you’ll rest, I promise I won’t.”
“You’ll make sure the Chinatown squad is hunting Chan Mon?”
“Of course.”
“You’ll canvass the saloons where the white men go? Maybe a bartender or someone will know Chan Mon or Elizabeth or Leo Lim—”
“We will. I promise.”
Anna knew Joe Singer always kept his promises. She breathed deeply in relief.
Joe extended his rough hand and shook Anna’s soft one. “Do you need me to see you home?”
“No. Go quickly. Solve the case.” She squeezed his hand and dropped it.
Joe smiled at Anna, waved his arm at her, and marched off in the direction of the station.
Anna headed for Chinatown.
Chan Mon was the key. She had to find Chan Mon.
CHAPTER 23
Anna swung through the door of Mr. Jones’s medicine shop, jingling the bells, tracking in horse droppings and mud from Los Angeles Street. Her nose tingled from the sharp, herbal smells. Mr. Jones sat behind the counter reading soberly, his chiseled face intent, his sensuous mouth peaceful. He appeared to be copying something from a book to a scroll, painting elegant Chinese characters in ink with a brush. He wore a pair of pristine silk pajamas, without a single smudge. Irrationally, she wondered who did his laundry.
He didn’t look up.
“Mr. Jones, I’m so glad you’re here. I need your help.” She was out of breath. “And you need me.”
He rested the wrist of his brush hand on the edge of the counter and raised his black eyes. “I told you, Matron Blanc. It’s a Chinese matter. Unless you have something to trade—”
Anna panted, “A journalist stole my notebook. He knows all about Elizabeth’s murder and he’s going to print all kinds of truth in the paper.”
Mr. Jones’s brush hand dropped into his lap, spattering ink on his pajamas.
“He gave me twenty-four hours to prove that a white man killed Elizabeth Bonsor.”
Mr. Jones whispered something passionate and perhaps profane under his breath. “Did a white man kill Elizabeth Bonsor?”
“I don’t know who killed Elizabeth. But help me find Chan Mon. He’s the key.”
He closed his book. “How so?”
“Because he was Leo Lim’s friend and Elizabeth’s lover. He might have killed her, and if he didn’t, he likely knows who did.”
Anna stopped speaking and pleaded with her eyes. “You must help me.” She stepped closer—so close she could read the cover of Mr. Jones’s book—the one he was translating from English into Chinese. “Jupiter.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Your book.”
“What about it?”
“The title. It’s Love Poems.”
A horn honked out on the street and a donkey brayed. Anna stumbled backward, fumbling in her purse for her gun amid handkerchiefs, hatpins, bullets, and spare change. She drew her rod and pointed it at Mr. Jones with steely, detective eyes. “You’re Chan Mon.”
Mr. Jones returned to painting the elaborate characters
on his scroll. “Chan Mon is the name my mother gave me. I don’t often use it in America. That’s not a crime.”
“Well, if the good people of Los Angeles learn your identity, you’re dead. And if you touch me, you’re double dead. I’ll kill you, and so will Joe Singer.”
He shook his glorious head. “I don’t hurt women, Matron Blanc. Especially not you. You remind me of her.”
“Elizabeth? You killed her.”
He laughed, but it sounded like despair. “I didn’t kill Elizabeth.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you loved her. Did she love you? Or did she love Leo Lim? Maybe you hired that hatchet man to kill them both.”
His face flushed a darker shade. He enunciated, “She loved me.”
“That might be hard to prove.”
Chan Mon reached into the inside pocket of his shirt and pulled out a letter on cream parchment paper. He extended the letter toward Anna with both hands. She crept forward, took it, then leapt back. It was warm from his skin and wrinkled from being worn close to his heart. It smelled of lilac perfume. She unfolded it and read, gun still pointed at Chan Mon.
He simply waited.
Elizabeth had written an epistle, and in no uncertain terms declared her love for Chan Mon, her disavowal of Leo Lim, and her plans to be Chan Mon’s wife. Mrs. Bonsor had been right. They were going to New York, where a Chinese man could marry a white woman. It was the bravest thing a woman could do for love, braver than anything Anna had ever done. Even in New York, Elizabeth would never be accepted with a Chinese husband.
“I am yours and only yours forever.” Anna’s gray eyes locked on his. He stared back with lowered lids.
Truthfully, she didn’t like Chan Mon for the killer, and not just because he was handsome. Poison was premeditated, not a crime of the moment. And when men were angry, they left marks. That eliminated Leo Lim as well. She lowered the gun and let it hang at her side.
Anna concentrated, moving facts around in her head like pieces of a puzzle. Three lovers formed a triangle, but there was someone else—one more player. Her killer made a square—a love square.
It came to Anna. “You loved Elizabeth, but someone else loves you. Who loves you, Chan Mon?”
“I don’t have another lover. There was only Elizabeth.”
Anna placed the letter carefully in her leather purse and snapped it shut. “Come now, Chan Mon. Someone asked you to go to Leo Lim’s apartment that day? A woman. Who was it?”
Chan Mon’s sensuous lips parted in surprise. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” Anna said. “But now I do. And whoever it was killed your lover.”
The doorbells jingled and a woman swept in, oblivious to the tension in the room. She wiped her feet neatly on the doormat. Her voice was cheerful. “Chan Mon.” She paused. Her angelic eyes widened like a thief who had just been caught red-handed. “Anna?”
Chan Mon’s anger bloomed like a red hibiscus, coloring his skin, filling his eyes with a deadly loathing.
“Jupiter.” Anna lowered her gun. “Oh my stars.”
Miss Robins ran.
Chan Mon charged after her. Anna stepped in front of him, hurling her body against his manly muscles. She wedged herself between him and the door. He would have to move her to pass. She said softly, “No, Chan Mon. This is a white matter.”
Anna felt slightly dazed, gnawing her lip, her eyes wet from riding her bike in the wind and from something else. She had to convince Joe Singer to arrest Miss Robins, his very own fiancée. But Joe would not be easy to convince, especially since he would be blinded by love. Anna ached for him, because she knew about broken hearts. But Joe would have to face the ugly truth, and the sooner the better.
Miss Robins might fly.
Anna skidded to a stop in front of Joe’s desk, where he sat studying photos of Chinese men, his eyes squinting in concentration. She opened her mouth and tried futilely to form the words. “Um . . .”
“Hi Sherlock. You should be at home.”
“Um.”
He stood up and smirked. “You got something to tell me?”
Drawing her brows together, she forced out a sentence. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Try me.”
She took Joe’s hand and gazed into his eyes, her eyes colored with regret. “Sit, Joseph.”
Joe withdrew his hand. “Look, Anna, we can’t be holding hands. I’m sorry about the kiss after the kidnapping incident. I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just, I had been very worried about you, and you were covered in honey—”
“Miss Robins is the killer, and she’s in love with Chan Mon.”
Joe laughed.
Anna grabbed his hand again. “Don’t you see, poor, dear Joe? Now we have a motive for the killer. Miss Robins knew Leo Lim had left town, fleeing the tong. He had come to her for prayer or something. She posed Elizabeth in Lim’s bed with the dummy to make Chan Mon think that Elizabeth was compromised. Chan Mon all but said she tried to lure him there.” She squeezed his hand to comfort him.
Joe took his hand back. “You found Chan Mon?”
“Yes. In his shop in Chinatown.”
He patted her on the back. “Good work, Sherlock. I’ll go arrest him. What’s the address?”
“You can’t arrest Chan Mon.”
“Anna, he’s our prime suspect. I can’t believe that Miss Robins killed anybody. And why set up a girl who you’ve just murdered? A dead girl is no rival. It’s too crazy, Anna.”
“I know. But she didn’t mean to kill Elizabeth. She just meant to drug her, put her in bed with the dummy, and lure Chan Mon to Lim’s apartment so he could see Elizabeth’s ersatz infidelity. But she gave Elizabeth too much. That evening, she left disguised in one of Lim’s suits, with his hat tilted low, which explains why he left his apartment twice that day.”
“How did she know Lim wasn’t going to be there?”
“He must have told her he was fleeing the tong. Remember? She prayed for him.”
“How did she get in?”
“I don’t know.” Anna paced. “The key. Perhaps he gave Elizabeth a key to feed his puss. Miss Robins told Elizabeth to come tell Leo Lim goodbye or something.”
“It’s a big leap, Sherlock.”
Anna took both his hands and met his eyes, full of pity. “You’re just saying that because you’re going to marry her, but I assure you, her love for you is just a ruse. She’s courting you to stay close to the investigation.”
Joe took back his hands. “I’m not going to marry Miss Robins.”
Anna’s eyes became soft and vulnerable. She looked up from beneath feathered lashes. “You’re not?”
Joe’s voice flared with some emotion that Anna couldn’t read. “No, I’m going to marry Miss Lory. I never told you I was going to marry Miss Robins. I invited her for ice cream once, and you jumped to conclusions.”
“Oh.” Anna’s face fell. She swayed over to a chair and sat. Joe Singer was going to marry the piano girl. At least Anna didn’t have to coddle him. Her voice became flat, which was unusual when she was fighting crime. “Also, I’m sure Mrs. Puce drinks opium tea. That’s why she’s nearly unconscious by the afternoon and why the missionary ladies never offered me any. She drank it right in front of me. At first, I simply thought they were rude, but they were just trying to keep her secret. If Mrs. Puce has it, Miss Robins could get it. But I looked it up. Opium tea is unpredictable. It’s easy to get the dose wrong. People die all the time. I collected a sample. We can test it.”
“So you want me to go arrest Miss Robins? Kind, godly Miss Robins?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“If you don’t arrest her by five o’clock tomorrow, Tilly will publish a story in the newspaper saying that Chan Mon killed Elizabeth Bonsor.”
Joe slapped his head with his hands. “Anna, what have you done?”
“What have I done? I’ve solved the crime!”
> Anna spun about so fiercely that her bun came loose. Joe grabbed her hand and spun her back. “Anna, I can’t just arrest a missionary lady. I need hard evidence.”
Anna’s bun hung sideways. “Then let go of me so I can find it.” She wrested free. “And by the way, Mr. Jones is Chan Mon.”
Joe worked his mouth like a guppy. Anna flounced out the door.
CHAPTER 24
Anna returned to Chan Mon’s medicine shop at the edge of Chinatown on Los Angeles Street. He would help her if Joe wouldn’t. Chan Mon was a leader. Chan Mon was smart. He would know what to do.
The shop was locked.
On the sidewalk, she accosted a man who balanced two baskets on a pole he had laid across his shoulders. They brimmed with cabbages. She said, “Where is Mr. Jones? Do you know where he’s gone?”
His head, crowned with a misshapen black hat, shook as if he didn’t understand, or maybe he was just afraid to speak to her. Anna groaned. Disregarding the puddles, she slapped along the street to a different man—a grandfather of a man, wizened and toothless, sitting on the box seat of a vegetable wagon. She pointed at Chan Mon’s medicine shop, her face contorted into a question mark. He looked Anna up and down as if she baffled him. Then he tilted his head back and made as if he was drinking.
Anna blinked. “Saloon?”
“All Fragrance.”
Anna had to concentrate to understand his accent. The man sipped again from his imaginary cup.
Anna’s mouth flattened. The last thing she needed was an inebriated Chan Mon. “Thank you.” She inclined her head sideways in a partial bow—half East, half West.
Anna had seen the All Fragrance Saloon as she’d wandered Chinatown. It lay sandwiched between two other saloons. If Chan Mon wasn’t swilling in one, he might be debauching in another.
She pedaled swiftly, her bike making a hissing sound as it sent up spray. Chinatown felt different today. Men loitered on both sides of Alameda Street, releasing fumes of aggression. The tongs, she guessed; the Bing Kong and the Hop Sing posturing for power. This time, their numbers reached twenty-five or more. The air crackled with the promise of violence. She clutched the handlebars tighter. Joe had been right about Chinatown. It was a treacherous place. But could a war really start now, with the girls gone and the presidents dead? Clearly the tongs did not easily forgive. A terrible thought came to Anna. Did they know that she had killed their president? She ought to turn and flee, but the time had passed. She skidded into their midst, flanked on either side of the road. She peddled furiously through the center of their battle lines, her wide eyes stinging in the wind.
The Woman in the Camphor Trunk Page 26
